What are the Czechs’ self-confidence? And who were the most confident Czechs in history? According to one-fifth of the addressed businessmen, the most confident ex-president was Václav Havel, followed by our very first president, Tomáš Garrigu Masaryk. Of the current businessmen, the name Petr Kellner was the most common (but only in about a twentieth of entrepreneurs), but Andrej Babiš and Tomáš Baťa also got it, who, according to entrepreneurs, have the same rating. Czech entrepreneurs themselves generally have a higher self-confidence than the majority of the Czech population, according to a survey by the Ipsos agency for the analytical project Česko v data.
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Czech businessmen have proven that good self-confidence is one of the basic prerequisites for starting a business. While Czechs generally rate their self-confidence on a ten-point scale (where each higher number means higher self-confidence) with a score of 6.4, entrepreneurs choose a mark nine percent higher (7).
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Almost half of entrepreneurs rate their self-esteem with a mark of eight or more, while less than a third of the majority population, which tends to underestimate themselves. This was shown by a survey by Ipsos, which was attended by 2,910 respondents, of whom 200 were entrepreneurs.
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Two thirds of entrepreneurs are also convinced that the level of our national self-confidence is lower than it should be (first sheet of graphics), for most other residents, about half of them are convinced of this (second sheet of graphics).
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However, when it comes to personal strength to overcome difficult life situations, almost 60 percent of Czech entrepreneurs rate it as very high, ie in the range of marks from 8 to 10 on a ten-point scale. The survey also showed that the level of personal strength and resilience is increased by the number of difficult life situations that entrepreneurs have experienced.
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“These are mainly situations related to one’s own business, such as the bankruptcy of a company, but to a large extent also situations related to family life. These include the upbringing of children or home care for the disabled or the elderly. For entrepreneurs, passing the state exams at the university often appears to be crucial, ”describes the details from the research by Adéla Denková from the analytical project Czechia in Data.
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Miroslav Michalko, an entrepreneur and founder of the Zaslat.cz transport service, agrees, for example, that stressful situations strengthen our self-confidence.
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“In the Czech Republic, education draws us down. Most of us, at least millennials, have grown up in the fact that it is better not to take risks and not stand out from the crowd. We have an aversion to risk and the ability to get out of the comfort zone, we have not been brought up in it and we have to find it ourselves. The experience gained by overcoming an obstacle is especially important. Self-confidence is a by-product of gaining such an experience, in fact, a bit of a reward, “says Michalko.
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Entrepreneurs, especially their families, help to gain personal strength. And also friends, but to a lesser extent than other residents. While for entrepreneurs the family is the most important driving force for less than half of them, for the majority population it is almost sixty percent.
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Friends are the most important for every tenth entrepreneur, in the general population this ratio is about half as high. On the contrary, it fills the business people more strongly with their own business – a tenth of entrepreneurs have identified this as the most important source of strength.
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On the contrary, the career itself and the social status or the amount of money or the amount of income for businessmen surprisingly does not have such value. In both cases, only about seven percent of them identified the most important motivation.
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According to the results of the survey, perseverance and responsibility are among the most important qualities of strong and confident entrepreneurs, both in the list of all important qualities. (first sheet in graphics), so when listing the most important (list 2). Another most important feature for them is the ability to focus on their goals and be able to communicate.
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The strong self-confidence of entrepreneurs can be seen in the answers to the question of what is most important for them to move on. For more than half of entrepreneurs, the main motivation for further overcoming is only their own feeling that they have mastered a challenging task.
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For 15 percent of them, the most important factor is financial success and the opportunity to give work to others, and a tenth of entrepreneurs identify good references associated with their business activities as the main motivation.
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When entrepreneurs have to think about who is a representative of a strong and confident Czech for them, and they can name all the names they remember from history or the present, then it is interesting that they usually do not mention entrepreneurs.
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The biggest role models for most of them are Presidents Václav Havel and Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, and the Czech King Charles IV ends up in third place with them. Hockey player Jaromír Jágr or singer Karel Gott have a stronger position in this respect than, for example, the richest Czech Petr Kellner (first sheet of graphics).
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When entrepreneurs have to name only one strong and confident businessman who is a role model for them in terms of business, they are often over. Almost half of them can’t identify anyone like that. In a few percent of cases, they agree on names such as Petr Kellner, Andrej Babiš or Tomáš Baťa – the last two names share the second and third place.
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Despite all the beliefs about self-confidence and sources of growth, however, the survey showed that the pandemic severely undermined entrepreneurs’ faith in the slogan of positive thinking textbooks, which coined the motto that every crisis is an opportunity to heal a strong person.
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About six out of ten entrepreneurs do not think that their business will emerge stronger from the crisis. Certainly 15 percent of business people don’t think so.
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“These respondents complain mainly about the decrease in orders and clients, lower incomes, but also about the restriction or complete ban on their activities,” says Adéla Denková from the Czechia in Data project. Four out of ten entrepreneurs see the pandemic as an opportunity for growth, and only one in ten is convinced of a positive impact on business.
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However, businesswoman Petra Plemlová, who founded e-shops with design fabrics for children unuodesign.cz and unuo.cz, is convinced that this view will change over time.
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“I believe that the self-confidence of the Czechs will be much more optimistic in this respect when the cloud of the coronavirus crisis goes away. If you ask an entrepreneur during the boom period about his self-confidence, his answer will certainly be different than at present, “believes Plemlová.
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